From the classroom to the streets: students demand quality education for all

Ever since its establishment, the Lifelong Learning Platform - European Civil Society for Education, has been advocating for adequate investment in education and training systems. As a public good, education and training funding is not optional, but rather it is in our public interest to see it flourish and learners succeed in their walks of life. We know we are not alone. As school students and young people take to the streets from France to Belgium, Italy, and beyond, LLLP adds its voice to the growing cry for robust, structural investment in education.

First, a basic fact: the secondary school student protest has grown to be the largest youth mobilisation in France since 1968, with over half a million people demonstrating every day. The movement has been flooding the streets and the news outlets, promising to grow even stronger. It is doing precisely that. Demands are simple: renovated school buildings, more teachers to reduce class sizes, better working conditions for the staff, greater attention to mental health, reorganised school time, and genuine student involvement in decisions that impact them. It also sheds light on the dire outcomes of underinvestment in education and training, after years of claiming that learners do not need more funding, but rather better usage of resources.

These demands echo what LLLP has long championed. Our Renewed Manifesto, adopted on our 20th anniversary, places Investment at the heart of our five advocacy priorities, precisely because this priority never wavered. Investment is key because it is the only way to keep Education a Public Good for All (LLLP 2023 campaign). We’re campaigning to keep the next Erasmus+ budget away from the threat of cuts and we strongly believe that EU Member States need to stand by the commitments they made to UNESCO to direct 20% of public expenditure to education and training. Because quality education for all is not a cost; it bears decisive returns on investment and it is the bedrock of democratic, inclusive societies. And yet, in France and elsewhere in Europe, school and higher education are buckling under enduring underfunding, with students all too often seeing their social status become a barrier to access and completion. Current underfunding is effectively dismantling the social mobility role of education.

The response to the protests is also alarming. Widespread episodes of police brutality and repression of peaceful demonstrations are never justified. Our members are on the frontline: the European Students’ Union (ESU) and the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU) have issued statements and mobilised their networks in affected countries.

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There’s also a question of legitimacy. Students are not yet recognised as legitimate political partners - but they must! And when discontent is expressly manifested in a democratic country it should not be treated as a threat, but rather as a voice to listen to. Meeting their demands and their need for security is the bare minimum a society should do.

Today, European education systems rely on underpaid teachers, overcrowded classrooms and crumbling buildings and are therefore failing their learners - just like we highlighted in our position paper on the challenges of teaching professions. The protests spreading across Europe are the direct consequence of decades of neoliberal policies of underinvestment and dismantling of the res publica. The very concerning downward trend in PISA results are just the tip, the actual iceberg lies in the ‘classrooms’. The message from European students is clear: nothing about us, without us. Listen to your youth: invest in education.